


Rendezvous

by azkabuns



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Assassins, Bellatrix Black Lestrange - Freeform, Celaena Sardothien - Freeform, Celaena meets her match, Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-27 01:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21110255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azkabuns/pseuds/azkabuns





	Rendezvous

Celaena’s job is all about stealth. There’s a reason she’s lasted so long as Adarlan’s assassin without getting into (too much) trouble. Her footfalls are soft, her clothing blending her into the shadows perfectly despite her blonde hair. This she has hastily braided back and secured with a rough length of dark cloth to keep it out of her way. A less vain woman than her might have cut it short and been more practical but beneath everything, and despite her best efforts, Celaena is still a bit of a princess.

Tonight, she doesn’t think it’ll matter. The house she observes is quiet, all the windows dark save one where her quarry no doubt sits oblivious to the fact that this is his last night. Had this been in Rifthold, she wouldn’t have spent so long scouting the place out but where Arobynn has sent her this time is somewhere entirely unfamiliar and unlike anywhere she’s been before.

One of his tests, no doubt.

Adarlan’s assassin crouches unmoving behind a partially crumbled stone wall, training kicking in to help her ignore the ache in her muscles from being unmoving for so long. She plans to give it another half hour, maybe, before she makes any kind of move, even though she’s confident she could be in and out within minutes regardless, but only minutes pass before she has to readapt.

A tall, dark-clad figure with wild hair is striding in full view up the drive, a long, thin dagger in one hand. Celaena leaps into action, springing from her hiding place to intercept her would-be competition. A few well-placed steps and she’s in front, dagger low and angled up.

“Who sent you?” Celaena asks, taking in the woman before her with one practised sweep of her eyes. What she thought was a dagger is nothing more than a stick and the derisive question is on the tip of her tongue but before she can utter the words, she feels it. A ripple, a crackle of power.

The woman has magic- but how is that possible? Celaena would have known, would have felt it if she’d crossed far enough away from the northern continent to feel her own magic return. She narrows her eyes and readjusts her grip on her dagger but this only makes the woman laugh. It’s not a pleasant sound; cracked and raw and untethered.

“You’re in no place to ask me questions, mudblood,” the woman sneers, raising the stick until it is pointed at Celaena’s chest, right over her heart. “But wait-“ the woman pauses while Celaena tries to puzzle out the meaning of the word she’s been called. Definitely an insult but not one she’s ever heard before. “Perhaps not. There is magic in you. A squib, then?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’d best get out of here and let me do my job before I gut you and sent you in pieces back to Jayne. He’s the one who sent you, right?”

Her threat, apparently, doesn’t go over too well for one minute she’s on her feet, prepared to strike with a quick slash of her knife, and the next she’s on the ground staring up at the night sky with the wind knocked out of her. That confirms it, the magic. It also confirms that the woman doesn’t merely hold a stick for the fun of it. It’s a wand, a channel for the woman’s magic. Celaena has heard of their existence but they haven’t been widely used anywhere in Erilea for years, as far as she’s aware.

She throws a knife, one of the smaller ones hidden at her ribs, before she’s properly on her feet and sees it bounce harmlessly away into the grass, repelled by an invisible shield. The woman bares her teeth in a predatory smile and for a split second, Celaena wonders if she has found her match. Without magic, she’ll have to rely on being quick, something she realises just in time as a jet of light flashes from the end of the wand and misses her by only a hair’s breadth.

“The family is mine,” snarls the woman, flinging out another spell to knock Celaena on her ass, but Celaena is already running, less concerned now about making a noise than reaching the house first. She pulls her hood up with one hand as she goes, hiding the beacon of her blonde hair to better blend into the night and, with any luck, throw off the aim of the spells still chasing her. Earth and grass explodes a foot away from her, the spell gouging a deep divot into the ground. She swears and swerves sideways, almost at the house, almost-

The woman is in front of her. Celaena hadn’t heard her running, hadn’t seen her overtake, and yet there she is, standing smugly ahead by the front door watching Celaena approach. More magic of a type she hasn’t ever seen before.  
“Who are you?” Celaena asks, halting with a spray of gravel from the path. She’s pissed off now, feeling the victory of her job well done being pulled away from her.

“Would knowing my name is Bellatrix Black make you feel any better at knowing you’ve been bested? Fool,” the woman – Bellatrix – admonishes, that unnervingly toothy, feral smile on her mouth again. “Not even using the magic you have… No better than a squib.” She taunts, lazily waving her wand as Celaena chances more steps forwards. She rebounds gently off the shield and scowls.

“I should kill you,” Bellatrix says, “For getting in my way but I’ll never waste a drop of truly magical blood if I can help it.” Her parting shot is another of the spells that had pulled Celaena’s feet from under her, and the assassin watches from the ground as her new arch-enemy walks into the house, the doors opening before her as though by some phantom hand.

As she makes her way back to the Assassin’s Keep, blood heated with humiliation and irritation, she wonders if she can still tell Arobynn she’d successfully rendered the target dead. From all she’s seen, there’s no way anyone’s coming out of that house alive and by allowing Bellatrix in alone, Celaena as good as killed them herself.


End file.
